Meta’s decision to end its long-standing fact-checking programme in January reverberated around the journalism community. At a time when falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, that decision felt like a major setback in the battle against misinformation and disinformation.

It was with this backdrop that I was interested to hear from two experts on fact-checking on a recent INMA Webinar: Aaron Sharockman, executive director at Politifact, and Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network. 

We talked about Meta’s decision, the importance of fact-checking, whether AI tools aid in fact-checking and more. Read on for highlights of that conversation.

And tell me what you think about the topic: amalie.nash@inma.org. 

Amalie

P.S. Will I see you at INMA’s Media Subscriptions Week in Amsterdam this week? If you’ll be there, drop me a note so we can find time to connect.

4 things to consider with fact-checking

Fact-checking predates Facebook and isn’t reliant upon it, but social media is where many people get information — and therefore is a crucial place to fact-check that information. 

“I don’t believe this is going to be the end of fact-checking by any means,” Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said of Meta’s decision. “I believe the pendulum is going to swing back because fact-checking is so needed for an Internet era.”

Aaron Sharockman, executive director at Politifact, said he sees some positives in the Meta decision. “It gives great opportunity to rethink what we are as fact-checkers and how we present that information,” he said, referencing different platforms and ways to reach users.

Here are a four things news organisations should consider with fact-checking:

1. Fact-checking can help readers make sense of an issue

Sharockman said he believes when the media focuses on covering “all sides” of an issue and simply quotes different perspectives, that abdicates responsibility for helping readers understand what is true. 

“You, of course, talk to everyone on all sides of an issue, but journalists went through a phase of just quoting people equally and letting readers decide,” he said. “In reality, journalism is giving people accurate information and telling them what is true.” 

The key to fact-checking, he said, is creating a process and being transparent.

2. Fact-checking is about more than politics

When we consider fact-checks, we often immediately think of those involving politics and politicians. That arena is ripe for fact-checking, of course. But fact-checking works well for many other topics, both nationally and locally, Sharockman said. 

PolitiFact experimented with fact-checking in local communities, for instance, over the course of eight months and focused on such issues as roads, water issues, and downtown development. 

“We can do effective fact-checking that people trust and believe,” Sharockman said. “There is still something there for journalism organisations even if you remove politics from fact-checking.”

3. Pick the right facts to check

Fact-checking is a rigorous and exhaustive process — it can take days or even weeks to get one fully reported and vetted, Sharockman said. So it’s important to find the right claims to fact-check. 

For instance, if a fact is readily available online from multiple credible sources, it may not make sense to further fact-check it. 

“Understand that it is a commitment,” Sharockman said. “So you don’t want to pick gotchas or things that seem trivial. You want to be looking at claims and narratives that your audience thinks are important. You need to be cautious and thoughtful about what you pick.”

4. AI doesn’t have a significant role in fact-checking — yet

We’ve seen people duped by AI-generated images and know AI has the potential to spread false claims — but does AI also help in fact-checking? 

Drobnic Holan said AI can be challenging in a fact-checking context. 

“In our experience so far, it has not been great at making determinations of factuality,” she said, noting AI is currently better as a language tool than as an arbiter of facts. 

However, she said AI is being used in other ways: IFCN has created a database of fact checks and added an AI interface to access it. The idea is that someone enters a question into a chatbot — like “does Vitamin C cure COVID?” — the chatbot will return results from the database of fact-checks.

Tell me what you think about fact-checking: amalie.nash@inma.org. 

Insights from “A New Journalism” and what we should learn

“(Journalism) is delivered in different mediums, of course, but fundamentally the output is the same as it was 50 years ago,” writes Alan Hunter, co-founder of HBM Advisory and former head of digital at The Times of London. “As practised by journalists, it hasn’t really adapted to the new platforms where it is now available, nor responded to our greater knowledge of what readers really want.”

I agree with that assessment, contained in two lengthy pieces Hunter recently published on LinkedIn titled:

• A New Journalism: part one.

• A New Journalism: part two.

I spent time with those pieces to glean some interesting takeaways:

“Being brutal, the content we are producing today is not engaging people — and especially not young people.”

Hunter points out that media organisations may be surprised at how few articles readers or subscribers consume per week and month. It’s true — I have long believed we simply aren’t providing the news many consumers want or giving it in the formats they want. 

This is where data comes in. If we’re brutally honest, metrics will tell us what’s working and what isn’t. 

“Be user-first,” Hunter says. “Journalism will only continue to be relevant if it is ruthlessly and unequivocally focused on what users — they are no longer just readers, but watchers and listeners, too — want from it.”

“In short, I believe every newsroom should put up a big sign saying: ‘You are not your readers.’” 

I love this quote from his piece: “We need to remember that most consumers are not as obsessed with the news as we are and that we have many fewer opportunities to offer them something valuable than we acknowledge. If we do this, it would be a great start to forging a new journalism.” 

This is absolutely true, and if we’d adopt this mindset, how would our content differ? Would we cover things differently? Better provide context in our stories? I have to believe we would.

“We’re still doing print journalism in a digital world.”

Hunter argues we’re continuing to value quantity over quality (the idea of “filling the paper”), and stories are written the same way they always have been. 

“The products being offered to readers are still mostly print-made-digital in genesis and execution,” he writes. 

I would urge every media organisation to get serious about alternative story formats and to measure their success. He argues the same: “Lean into telling stories in new formats and using new technologies.”

“It is astonishing how resistant journalism has been to data.”

Hunter’s experience includes working with newsrooms that challenge the data or say the mission supersedes what the data shows. 

“My simplest argument on this subject is that the data is your readers,” Hunter writes. “Never have we known so much about what our readers actually want to read and how long they are prepared to read it. This is a blessing and we should embrace it further.” 

I’ve been surprised how long it’s taken many media companies to embrace data — both for what it can tell us about what readers want and what it can tell us about things we should stop doing. 

“No wonder we don’t get the engagement we think we deserve. We are disrespectful of people’s time.”

“For years now, every single study about news avoidance reports back that users feel overwhelmed by the volume of content they are faced with every day,” Hunter writes. “And what has been the news industry’s response? More content.”

Let’s be selective and distinct. What can we offer that no one else can? How do we offer it? What’s our exclusive take instead of multiple stories readers can get elsewhere?

These insights may sound dour and dire, but as a news industry, we need to listen and evolve. The hardest part about transformation isn’t that we have no idea what to do — it’s that we have the data and guideposts but we’re not acting quickly enough. While we face business model challenges, we also face the challenge of proving our relevancy and value daily.

Did you read those pieces? What did you take away?amali amalie.nash@inma.org.

Mark your calendars

Upcoming INMA events that shouldn’t be missed:

• March 19: “Effective Strategies for GenAI in Advertising,” featuring Michael McCarthy, senior director of AI, sales, and business solutions, Hearst Newspapers, and Katherine Scarrow, deputy head of Globe Content Studio, The Globe and Mail. Register now.

• March 26: “Subscription Masters Series: Dow Jones,” presented by Sheryn Weiss, chief marketing officer, Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. Part of the Subscription Masters series from INMA’s Readers First Initiative. Register now.
  

• April 23: “Tracking Success: A Demo of Politiken’s Data Insights Dashboard,” presented by Troels Behrendt Jørgensen, digital director, and Mikkel Stampe Davidsen, developer/data scientist/analyst, Politiken. Part of the INMA Newsroom Transformation Initiative. Register now.

About this newsletter

Today’s newsletter is written by Amalie Nash, based in Denver, Colorado, United States, and lead for the INMA Newsroom Transformation Initiative. Amalie will share research, case studies, and thought leadership on the topic of bringing newsrooms into the business of news.

This newsletter is a public face of the Newsroom Transformation Initiative by INMA, outlined here. E-mail Amalie at amalie.nash@inma.org or connect with her on INMA’s Slack channel with thoughts, suggestions, and questions.

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